February 15, 2009
This Week's roundtable: The Porkulus
I checked out the roundtable at the tail end of This Week With George Stephanopoulos, where I saw some remarkably awful political analysis from everyone but the prim and prissy George Will.
Donna Brazile, the knee-jerk lefty Democratic Party hack, had this to say about the Porkulus:
Most Americans out there understand that Congress had to do something. This may not be the appetizer -- and I blame George Will, he had an opportunity to feed Barack Obama, and you gave him that lean pork chop or lamb chop, (LAUGHTER) and it's your fault, so don't blame the rest of us when we go and put some added pork in the bill to help stabilize the economy and provide jobs to those who are losing their jobs, and of course, additional income: Thirteen dollars every other week! Most Americans will see that, they will be able to get maybe some more bread, and some more meat, some more gas. This is good!
I'm glad Brazile and her fellow panelists found so much to guffaw about in the Porkulus; I wasn't moved to crack a smile at the pork chop/lamb chop line, much less chuckle aloud. As to her substantive point, such as it was: Thirteen dollars? Thirteen dollars?! Almost a trillion dollars and we're supposed to give them a standing ovation because, in the opinion of a Democratic Party insider, we're tossing $13 bucks twice a month at American families?
How cheaply do they think we can be bought? I knew the politicians were openly contemptuous of us, the People, their ostensible bosses, but I hadn't realized the depth of their contempt, that they can whore us out, buy our support for $26 a month.
George Will began to point out the dishonesty of the president's charge that the Porkulus had to be passed Right Now!, that there was no alternative to a "Yes" vote, before he was interrupted by Sam Donaldson, who contributed a galactically-stupid metaphor, one that drew an all-time great putdown from Will.
George Will: But that is the fallacy of the false alternative, and the president has been wielding it promiscuously, quite frankly. He says it's either this or nothing. That's just not true. There are lots of things that could have been done, that weren't, and lots of things that are done in this bill that shouldn't be done ...
Sam Donaldson: But George, you're right, no doubt. But that's the bill we had, so the question was, do you at the end of the day, vote for the bill --
George Will: Of course not --
Sam Donaldson: (Throws hand up in the air) Oh, of course not! George, let me just say, so the big rolling stone following Indiana Jones is coming down, and somebody says, "Let's go to the left and escape it!", "No, that's the wrong direction. Let's go to the right!" And you just sit there? No! You go to the left, if that's what the majority wants to do.
[...]
Sam Donaldson: Going back to the central point, doing nothing can't be right for the country --
George Will: Fallacy, fallacy --
Sam Donaldson: -- can't be right for the country politically, and politically means something, because one of the great factors is people's confidence: I've got two nickels but I'm not going to spend them; if I have a little confidence I might spend them.
George WIll: You are a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen. No one is advocating do nothing.
Sam Donaldson: In the final vote, when you don't vote for something, you're doing nothing.
Actually, Donaldson, when you don't vote for something, you're saying, "That wasn't the answer; let's continue the debate and produce something better."
Perhaps the most disheartening thing about the roundtable on This Week was the fact that Will, the token conservative, failed to point out that almost no one knew what was in the Porkulus before the rush to vote on it; that the Democrats broke President Obama's promise of transparency, and their own rule that all bills would be posted online and made available to the American people for a full 48 hours before being brought to a vote.
Hundreds of billions of dollars blown on unnecessary, wasteful projects, contributing nothing to an economic recovery, rammed through legislative process, debate cut off, for no good reason.
None at all.
And just you wait, there's more to come as the Democrats, emboldened by their success at convincing the Turncoat Three RINOs in the Senate to cross over and push the bill through, propose another trillion-dollar giveaway, sure that it will breeze through the Congress on skids greased with bipartisan porkfat.
Unbelievable.
Posted by Mike Lief at February 15, 2009 09:31 AM
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Comments
The only thing transparent about this administration will be its motives.
G.Will is conservative enough, and he likes baseball, but he doesn't talk plain. Sniveling about the fallacy of the false alternative won't fire up the conservative constituency.
Posted by: The Little Coach at February 15, 2009 03:42 PM
Forget "conservatism," please. It has, operationally, de facto, been Godless and thus irrelevant. Secular conservatism will not defeat secular liberalism because to God they are two atheistic peas-in-a-pod and thus predestined to failure. As Stonewall Jackson's Chief of Staff R.L. Dabney said of such a humanistic belief more than 100 years ago:
”[Secular conservatism] is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is today .one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will tomorrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution; to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It .is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth."
Our country is collapsing because we have turned our back on God (Psalm 9:17) and refused to kiss His Son (Psalm 2).
John Lofton, Editor, TheAmericanView.com
Recovering Republican
JLof@aol.com
Posted by: John Lofton, Recovering Republican at February 16, 2009 01:57 PM